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      Jennette McCurdy Is Ready to Move Forward, and to Look Back

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      In her memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” McCurdy, best known for her role in“iCarly,” reflects on her time as a child actor and on her troubled relationship with her mother.When Jennette McCurdy was 16, she was in her third year on “iCarly,” the hit teen sitcom on Nickelodeon. Millions of young viewers admired her for her comic portrayal of Sam Puckett, the wisecracking pal of its title character, and she was proud that her lucrative work was helping to support her family.McCurdy was also living under the stringent control of her mother, Debra, who oversaw her career, determined her meals — her dinners consisted of shredded pieces of low-cal bologna and lettuce sprayed with dressing — and even administered her showers.Her mother gave her breast and vaginal exams, which she said were inspections for cancer, and shaved her daughter’s legs while McCurdy remained largely uneducated about the changes her body was experiencing.She struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders and anxiety triggered by the constant attention she received as a celebrity, but she felt trapped in her work. She also believed she owed her unfaltering loyalty to her mother, who had recovered from breast cancer when Jennette was very young, only for her cancer to return in 2010, at the height of her daughter’s fame.Debra McCurdy died in 2013, and Jennette, now 30, is still reckoning with the gravitational pull exerted by her mother, who steered her to the trade that gave her visibility and financial stability while she controlled virtually every aspect of her daughter’s existence.When Jennette McCurdy wrote a memoir, which Simon and Schuster will publish on Aug. 9, it was clear to her that her relationship with her mother would provide its narrative force. “It’s the heartbeat of my life,” she said recently.McCurdy as Sam and Miranda Cosgrove as Carly in “iCarly.”Lisa Rose/NickelodeonThe book is titled “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” and its cover bears the image of McCurdy, a narrow half-smile on her face, holding a pink funeral urn with confetti strands peeking over its rim. The presentation might be off-putting to some readers; the author is well aware. But she also feels it accurately encapsulates a coming-of-age story that is alternately harrowing and mordantly funny.When you have grown up as she has, feeling tenderness and anger toward a person you’ve seen wield immense power while fighting for her own life, she said, “You can’t believe how hard and how laughable it is at the same time. That’s completely my sense of humor.”“I feel like I’ve done the processing and put in the work to earn a title or a thought that feels provocative,” she added.Though McCurdy may have the résumé of a seasoned Hollywood veteran, she carried herself like a wide-eyed tourist on a visit to New York in late June. Over afternoon tea at the BG Restaurant in midtown Manhattan, she gazed at fellow patrons, asked for Broadway theater recommendations and chided herself about a transcendental meditation class she’d taken near her home in Los Angeles.“So far, I haven’t seen any results,” she said with a chuckle, “but we’ll see.”When it comes to new endeavors, McCurdy said, “I think things should feel natural. So much of my life was about forcing or pushing things. So when something feels like it’s working, I’ll let that be, and anything else can fall by the wayside.”As McCurdy recounts in her memoir, she was 6 when she started auditioning for acting roles, having been shepherded into the work by her mother, who was her herself discouraged from becoming an actress by her own parents.Growing up in Southern California, McCurdy was cast in TV commercials and shows like “Mad TV,” “Malcolm in the Middle” and “CSI” before landing “iCarly,” which had its debut in 2007. Yet she never had any illusions about who was really benefiting from these accomplishments. As she writes of the moment she learned she had booked “iCarly,” “Everything’s going to be better. Mom will finally be happy. Her dream has come true.”McCurdy endured various embarrassments and indignities at Nickelodeon, where she writes of being photographed in a bikini at a wardrobe fitting and being encouraged to drink alcohol by an intimidating figure she simply calls the Creator. In situations where her mother was present, Debra did not intervene or speak up, instructing Jennette that this was the price of showbiz success: “Everyone wants what you have,” she would tell her daughter.When McCurdy was promised an “iCarly” spinoff, she assumed she’d be given her own show — only to receive a co-starring slot on “Sam & Cat,” which paired her with the future pop-music sensation Ariana Grande.There, she says her superiors on these shows prevented her from pursuing career opportunities outside the show while Grande thrived in her extracurricular work. As McCurdy writes, “What finally undid me was when Ariana came whistle-toning in with excitement because she had spent the previous evening playing charades at Tom Hanks’s house. That was the moment I broke.”McCurdy, as Sam, and Ariana Grande as Cat in Sam & Cat, on Nickelodeon.Lisa Rose/NickelodeonAs McCurdy grew older and more independent, her relationship with her mother became further strained. The book reproduces an email in which her mother calls her “a SLUT,” “a FLOOZY” and “an UGLY MONSTER,” then concludes with a request for money for a refrigerator. When Debra had a recurrence of cancer and died, Jennette, then 21, was liberated — and left to navigate a complex world without her guidance, contending with destructive romantic relationships, bulimia, anorexia and alcohol abuse.“iCarly” ended its original run in 2012, and “Sam & Cat” ran just one season from 2013-14, after which, McCurdy writes, she turned down a $300,000 offer from Nickelodeon if she agreed never to speak publicly about her experiences at the network. (A press representative for Nickelodeon declined to comment.)She was free to reclaim her personal life and pursue other projects, like the Netflix science-fiction series “Between.” But she found it difficult to let go of the resentment from how she’d been treated when she was younger. As she said in an interview, “It felt like all these decisions were being made on my behalf and I was the last one to know about them. That’s really infuriating. It led to a lot of rage.”Even now, McCurdy found that revisiting the era of her child stardom resurfaced raw feelings about a parent, and an industry, that had failed to protect her.“My whole childhood and adolescence were very exploited,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. “It still gives my nervous system a reaction to say it. There were cases where people had the best intentions and maybe didn’t know what they were doing. And also cases where they did — they knew exactly what they were doing.”Marcus McCurdy, the oldest of Jennette’s three brothers, said that their mother was consistently volatile when they were growing up.“You were always walking on eggshells — is it going to be nice mom or crazy mom today?” he said. “One day she’d be fine, the next day she’d be yelling at everybody. Every holiday was super overdramatic. She’d lose her mind on Christmas if something wasn’t perfect.”Friends and colleagues from Jennette McCurdy’s time as a child actor said they could sense the tension in her relationship with her mother, even if they did not yet know the exact details.“Jennette can be outgoing, very forward and bright and electric,” said David Archuleta, the pop singer and “American Idol” finalist. “I could also tell she was very guarded, very protective of her mom and they were very close.”Archuleta, whose career was closely controlled by his father when he was a minor, said such arrangements can be destructive for children.“Because you’re always with that parent, they don’t really let you around anyone else,” Archuleta said. “You don’t look at it as a control thing — you look at it as, ‘Oh, they’re looking out for me.’ And they make you feel like everyone is against you.”Over time, Archuleta added, the parent may turn toxic. “It gets to where it’s like, ‘You can’t make any decisions on your own. You can’t do anything on your own. You’re too dumb.’”Miranda Cosgrove, the star of “iCarly,” said that though she and McCurdy quickly became close on the show, she was initially unaware of many difficulties her friend was facing, which McCurdy only revealed as they became older.“When you’re young, you’re so in your own head,” Cosgrove said. “You can’t imagine that people around you are having much harder struggles.”In a softer voice, Cosgrove added, “You don’t expect things like that from the person in the room who’s making everyone laugh.”“So much of my life was about forcing or pushing things,” McCurdy said. Now, “I think things should feel natural.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesFor McCurdy, opening up about herself to the wider world has been a long-term process. In her late teens and early 20s, she wrote essays for The Wall Street Journal that shared some of her insights into child stardom. But today she feels she was not fully candid.“If I had been truthful at that time,” she explained, “I would have said, ‘Yeah, I wrote this and then I went and made myself throw up for four minutes afterward.’”A few years ago, McCurdy started writing a new series of personal essays, including several about her mother, and shared them with her manager at the time. “My manager sent me back a nice email that said, ‘This is great — I don’t really know what to do with this.’ I’ll never forget the ‘xoxo’ at the end.” (McCurdy no longer works with that manager.)Instead, she began performing a one-woman show, also called “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” in Los Angeles. Though the pandemic impeded plans to take the show on the road, McCurdy used some of her down time to craft the memoir. “I really wanted to build it out a lot more, get more into the childhood aspect of the story and work through the arc in a way that you only can with a book,” she explained.Marcus McCurdy said he supported his sister’s decision to write her memoir, even if her calling it “I’m Glad My Mom Died” has caused some consternation in the family.“Our grandmother is very upset about that title,” Marcus said, adding that he and his sister share a similar sense of humor. “It’s more of a coping mechanism,” he said. “You can either be like, ‘Woe is me, my life is horrible.’ Or you find the humor in these things that are really tragic.”Archuleta also said it was empowering for McCurdy to write her book. “It’s given her back some of her strength, her confidence,” he said.McCurdy is writing another set of essays about coming into her own in her 20s, as well as a novel. (Its protagonist, she said, is “either who I wish I could be in some aspects, or who I hope I never am in other aspects. But it’s probably me, right?”)Aside from a few watch parties that her family held for her earliest episodic TV work, McCurdy told me, “I’ve never seen any of the shows that I’ve been on.” For her, these were fraught documents of her suffering and unwelcome reminders of the helplessness she felt at the time.A few years ago, after the cancellation of her Netflix series, McCurdy decided to take a break from acting. As she writes in the memoir, “I want my life to be in my hands. Not an eating disorder’s or a casting director’s or an agent’s or my mom’s. Mine.” She did not take part in a recent revival of “iCarly” on Paramount+. But McCurdy said that her experience with her one-woman show has shown her there might be ways that performance could be constructive for her in the future.“It felt significant in repairing some of the really weighted, complicated relationships that I had with acting,” she said. “It felt like finally I’m saying my words and saying things I want to be saying. I’m myself.”Though McCurdy can still find it uncomfortable to reflect on her past, it also makes her hopeful to focus on the present and to see the friends and colleagues who are part of her life because she alone chose for them to be in it.“I have people around me now that are so supportive and so loving,” she said. “It makes me tearful with joy. I feel so safe. I feel so much trust and so much openness.” More

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      How ‘The Bear’ Captures the Panic of Modern Work

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      You don’t have to work in a kitchen to recognize the chaos and precarity the show depicts.The Original Beef of Chicagoland is the fitting name of the restaurant at the heart of the acclaimed FX series “The Bear,” which stars Jeremy Allen White as Carmy, a world-class chef who returns home to run his family’s sandwich shop after his older brother’s suicide. Of all American cities, Chicago is the one whose mythos is most closely associated with a particular kind of work: honest, meaty, broad-shouldered labor that forges you into something bigger, nobler. Like the city it’s set in, the restaurant in “The Bear” is an unpretentious place, humbly catering to “the working man.” But “the working man,” we soon learn — as a young, Black, female sous-chef mocks an older, white, male manager’s use of the label — is a contested term, especially in an environment where nobody does anything but work, and pretty much nobody has anything to show for it. It’s unclear, at first, why Carmy, once named one of Food & Wine’s “Best New Chefs,” has come back to the sandwich shop, but we’re gradually made to understand that he is returning, compulsively, to a traumatic site. Food was the thread that connected him to his brother, but his brother wouldn’t let him in the kitchen, and so off to Sonoma and New York he went, to make something of himself. The Original Beef of Chicagoland is also Carmy’s original beef — the core wound that ignited his ambition, the site of his connection to his family as well as his estrangement from it.The story of the prodigal son returning from some summit of achievement to his salt-of-the-earth hometown is a beloved American narrative, most often seen in Christmas movies about frazzled executives returning to their roots. They are intended to reify the comforting notion that work isn’t everything — that the real America is slow, simple, cozy and (above all) fair, a place that rewards you for your efforts, full of wise, avuncular coots and simple, patient girls who’ve been waiting all along. But when Carmy returns to Chicago, he finds his elders are either absent or trying to exploit him, and the only girl who’s interested in his feelings is his sister. Just as success failed to save him, honest work won’t either; it won’t even generate enough money to get by. The Original Beef may signal noble, can-do labor, but it’s also a decompensating system on the verge of structural collapse. A few episodes in, the toilet explodes, unleashing a geyser in Carmy’s face. An industrial mixer blows a fuse, knocking out the power. The gas goes out, forcing the kitchen staff to build makeshift grills outside. They have no choice; one missed lunch service could take them out. A 1980s arcade game called Ball Breaker blares stupidly, violently from one corner, handily summarizing the experience. “Your balls have been broken!!” its screen announces. “Continue?”“The Bear” has been praised for its visceral depiction of the stress of a professional kitchen, but you don’t have to have done restaurant work to recognize the chaos, panic and precarity the show captures so convincingly. In “The Bear,” work is a dumb, sadistic game that has left Carmy with unchecked PTSD. Intrusive thoughts and flashbacks fracture his consciousness; he even cooks in his sleep, almost setting his house on fire. Richie, the restaurant’s manager, takes Xanax because he suffers from “anxiety and dread.” (“Who doesn’t?” Carmy snaps.) Sydney, the sous-chef, has a cabinet stuffed with medication for heartburn and ulcers, problems that may have been sparked by a failed attempt to run her own business. (“It was the first time I didn’t have a complete and utter psychopath behind me screaming,” she says. “And I thought I wanted that, you know? But look where that got me.”) The restaurant is drowning in bills. When the characters aren’t yelling at one another at top volume, they’re often shutting down to cope with all the yelling. Their customers are like kids stuck in a car with warring parents. The word you see most frequently in writing about the show is “stressful,” but it’s often accompanied by descriptions of the workplace as “soul-crushing,” “toxic” or “abusive.” All this is intended as praise — the idea is that, despite its occasional excesses, the show has captured something relatable and true.Hustle has always been romanticized in American culture, which promises that nobly sacrificing yourself on the altar of endless work will pay off in the end. But it’s increasingly clear that for most people, it won’t. Twenty-two years ago, when Anthony Bourdain published “Kitchen Confidential,” he glamorized the kitchen as a kind of foxhole, populated by wild, dysfunctional hard-asses yelling profanities at one another while managing to crank out hundreds of plates every night. This may once have seemed exotic or picturesque, but that pressure-cooker environment has come to feel familiar to more and more workers in more and more industries. The American economy soared over the past decade, but life for most became harder: “In one of the best decades the American economy has ever recorded, families were bled dry by landlords, hospital administrators, university bursars and child-care centers,” Annie Lowrey wrote in The Atlantic in 2020. “For millions, a roaring economy felt precarious or downright terrible.” “The Bear” is compelling not because of how it recreates a kitchen but because it captures something about modern work in general.‘The Bear’ is compelling not because of how it recreates a kitchen but because it captures something about modern work in general.Carmy and Sydney work insane hours, rising at dawn and waiting for L trains on dark platforms, too exhausted to think about anything else. At times it seems as if work is how they escape from having to think about what is happening to them. Sydney tells someone her goal is simply to do her job and live her life, but it’s abundantly clear that, outside her job, she has little life to speak of. These conditions don’t spur creativity; on the contrary, they’re counterproductive. Carmy can’t spare time to listen to Sydney’s ideas about the dinner menu or encourage the pastry chef’s experiments with doughnuts. Exploring your talent, in this environment, might turn out to be another luxury the “working man” can’t afford, something that belongs exclusively to narcissists with financial backing. This inequality comes into focus early in the show: We see Carmy abused by an arrogant chef and, in Chicago, paid a visit by his mobster uncle, who talks down the restaurant — the place is unfixable, he says — before trying to buy it for himself. Carmy is furious to learn that Richie has been dealing cocaine in the alley behind the restaurant to keep it afloat, but Richie justifies his actions by co-opting the language of entrepreneurship, crediting this side hustle with getting the place through Covid. “That’s the kind of stick-to-it-iveness and ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking that we look for in employees,” he says. “But that ship has sailed, my friend.” This is the startling milieu and message of “The Bear,” the thing that has struck a chord. The notion that hustle will eventually pay off is an insidious pipe dream. Everyone is in survival mode all the time. The system has failed. The place is unfixable. Source photographs: Screen grabs and photographs from FX More

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      Trevor Noah Weighs In on the Killing of Ayman al-Zawahri

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      Noah argued that safe houses should be called something different because “every terrorist gets killed in a safe house.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Safety Not GuaranteedOn Monday, President Biden announced that an American drone strike killed the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.“What’s crazy is that America didn’t just kill him — they killed him with a razor blade missile,” Trevor Noah said on Tuesday, adding that he didn’t even know such things existed. “The weapons America has sound like things that kids just make up on the playground.”“America clipped the world’s most wanted terrorist off of his safe house balcony? I mean, also, at this point maybe we should stop calling them ‘safe houses.’ No, every terrorist gets killed in a safe house. They should — they should call it a house that you think you’re safe in, but you never know.” — TREVOR NOAH“I will say, you know, when you see stories like this, when you see stories about what America is capable of, this is where you realize there’s really no excuse for the amount of domestic terrorism in America, all right? Because al-Zawahri — al-Zawahri lived all the way in Afghanistan in some random safe house in the middle of nowhere, and America knew what time of day he liked to go out onto his balcony. But when a white supremacist posts on Facebook he’s going to murder everyone and buys an AR-15, everyone’s like, ‘There was no way to stop this. If only he liked balconies.’” — TREVOR NOAH“Reportedly, the C.I.A. targeted him with a drone strike while he was on the balcony of his house at 6:18 a.m. on Sunday. That’s so early. He was drinking from a mug that said, ‘Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my hellfire missile.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, they got him with a drone. His last words were, ‘Wait, did I order same-day delivery?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, they took him out with a drone. And if that didn’t work, they were just going to send him an envelope that Biden licked.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, Biden took out al-Zawahri, Obama took out bin Laden, and Trump said, ‘OK, who wants to order takeout?’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Pelosi Takes Taiwan Edition)“Well, everyone is talking about this, even though China said that there would be consequences, Nancy Pelosi ignored the warnings and decided to visit Taiwan. Poor Biden, he took out the top leader of Al Qaeda, and everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nancy just landed in Taiwan?” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden is like, ‘It’s a bold move that definitely could have waited until I was out of office!’” — JIMMY FALLON“Pelosi has clearly stolen the headlines from Biden. Now, to get back on top, Biden is thinking about getting Covid a third time.” — JIMMY FALLON“The threats from the Chinese government have not been subtle. Last week, the Chinese warned that, ‘Those who play with fire will perish by it.’ Have you seen California? That’s not the threat it once was, China.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Chinese continue to rattle their flaming saber, warning, ‘The visit would trigger severe consequences,’ and warned that their military won’t sit by idly, with their government explaining, ‘no matter for what reason Pelosi goes to Taiwan, it will be a stupid, dangerous and unnecessary gamble.’ That’s ominous. Also a perfect slogan for White Castle.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Chinese have also conducted live-fire drills in the South China Sea and scrambled jets as her plane landed in Taiwan. All of this for an 82-year-old woman with bones made of peanut brittle. Tensions are so bad the Defense Department has upgraded its readiness to Defcon: Mee-maw.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe stand-up comic Ms. Pat talked about her Emmy-nominated sitcom, “The Ms. Pat Show,” on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightKevin Bacon will join Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutFrom left, Wes Studi, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Paulina Alexis in a scene from Season 2 of “Reservation Dogs,” which centers on a group of teenagers on an Oklahoma reservation.Shane Brown/FXThe second season of FX’s “Reservation Dogs” deepens the show’s emotion and builds on its sense of place. More

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      Burt Metcalfe, Who Left His Mark on ‘M*A*S*H,’ Is Dead at 87

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      He was the showrunner of the classic Korean War sitcom for its last six seasons, notably casting David Ogden Stiers as the pompous surgeon Winchester.Burt Metcalfe, who as the showrunner of “M*A*S*H” for the last six of its 11 seasons made a critical casting decision as he began his tenure and helped write the two-and-a-half-hour final episode, contributing ideas he had picked up on a trip to South Korea, died on July 27 in Los Angeles. He was 87.His death, at a hospital, was caused by sepsis, said his wife, Jan Jorden, who played a nurse in several episodes of “M*A*S*H.”Mr. Metcalfe had been an actor and casting director before becoming a producer of “M*A*S*H,” the sitcom about the staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, a show widely regarded as one of the best series in television history. He joined for its first season, in 1972, at the request of Gene Reynolds, a friend and an architect of the show along with the writer Larry Gelbart. When Mr. Reynolds left after the fifth season, Mr. Metcalfe succeeded him as the executive producer running the series.“He was able to successfully guide the show because of his personality, which was unusual,” Alan Alda, who starred in the series as the surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, said in an interview. “He was unselfish, he was gentle, and he was interested in the humanity of the characters.”Mr. Metcalfe did not have to change much of what had been built by Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Gelbart, who left after the fourth season. For instance, he continued Mr. Reynolds’s practice of interviewing doctors and nurses who had served in the Korean War and who provided a rich supply of potential medical story lines. Mr. Alda, who wrote and directed many of the episodes, said he had pored over interview transcripts looking for a phrase that could inspire a story.When, at a conference in Chicago, Mr. Metcalfe interviewed doctors who had served in the war, one told him that the series had made him “a hero” to his family. “They watched the show and my son says to the neighbor kids, ‘My dad is Hawkeye,’” Mr. Metcalfe quoted the doctor as saying in an interview with the Television Academy in 2003.He said that under his direction, without what he called Mr. Gelbart’s “comedic intensity,” “M*A*S*H” had a more serious bent.“We delved more deeply into the characters’ personalities in ways we hadn’t done before,” he told the academy. “We got criticism in later years that it was becoming more serious and less funny.”Before the sixth season, Mr. Metcalfe’s first as showrunner, he faced the task of replacing Larry Linville, who was leaving the show after his run as the officious, rules-obsessed ninny Major Frank Burns. Mr. Metcalfe, who had originally cast Mr. Linville, said he wanted an actor who could play a much more formidable surgeon with a superiority complex. He found him one Saturday night when he saw David Ogden Stiers play a ruthless station manager on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and he hired him to play the pompous surgeon Charles Emerson Winchester III.“When David Stiers was dying, I wrote him an email,” Mr. Metcalfe said in 2020 on “M*A*S*H” Matters,” a podcast hosted by Ryan Patrick and Jeff Maxwell, who played the food server Igor on the series. He told Mr. Stiers, he said, that hiring him to play Winchester “was the best decision I made of all the decisions I had to make on ‘M*A*S*H.’” Mr. Stiers died in 2018.Mr. Metcalfe, second from right, accepted a TV Land Award for “M*A*S*H” in 2009 alongside the cast members, from left, Allan Arbus, Ms. Swit, Mike Farrell and Mr. Alda.Fred Prouser/ReutersBurton Denis Metcalfe was born on March 19, 1935, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His father, Louis, was a vending machine distributor who died when Burt was 3. Burt moved with his mother, Esther (Goldman) Metcalfe, a secretary, to Montreal, where he developed a love of acting. He performed comic sketches and imitations in front of his aunts, uncles and cousins; while attending a children’s theater school, he was asked to appear in half-hour radio dramas.Burt and his mother moved in 1949 to Los Angeles, where he finished high school. In 1955, he received a bachelor’s degree in theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.Over the next decade, Mr. Metcalfe was a working actor, appearing as a guest star on “Death Valley Days,” “The Outer Limits,” “Have Gun — Will Travel,” “The Twilight Zone” and other series; as a regular on the sitcom “Father of the Bride” in the 1961-62 season; and as a surfer named Lord Byron in the 1959 film “Gidget.”Feeling bored, he moved into casting in 1965. This eventually led Mr. Reynolds to ask him to find actors for two pilots: “Anna and the King,” an adaptation of the musical “The King and I,” and “M*A*S*H.”Both pilots were picked up, but “Anna and the King,” in which Yul Brynner reprised his stage and screen role, was canceled after 13 episodes. Mr. Metcalfe became an associate producer of “M*A*S*H” in addition to overseeing the casting; he became a producer in the fourth season, during which he directed his first three episodes (he would direct a total of 31). He became executive producer when Mr. Reynolds left to run the production of “Lou Grant.”A couple of years before “M*A*S*H” ended, Mr. Metcalfe went to South Korea to talk to civilians about how they had been affected by the war. One story — about a mother who had been with a group of South Koreans trying to escape from a North Korean patrol, and who smothered her baby to avoid jeopardizing their safety — stuck with him.Mr. Metcalfe contributed that story to the script for the series finale. In that episode, Hawkeye has a nervous breakdown on a bus ride with members of the 4077th and refugees after telling one of the refugees to quiet her chicken so as not to alert the enemy, only to realize later, under psychotherapy, that she had actually smothered her baby.Mr. Metcalfe was nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including four for directing.He is survived by Emily O’Meara, whom he regarded as his daughter. His marriage to Toby Richman ended in divorce.Soon after “M*A*S*H” concluded, Mr. Metcalfe became the executive producer of the series “AfterMASH,” a sequel in which three characters from the original — Corporal Klinger (played by Jamie Farr), Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan) and Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) — worked at a veterans’ hospital in Missouri. It was canceled after 30 episodes.Mr. Metcalfe joked on the podcast that his decision to hire Mr. Stiers “was only a preface to making lots of bad decisions on ‘AfterMASH.’”He later became an executive at Warner Bros. and MTM Enterprises. He retired in the 1990s.“TV had changed by then,” Ms. Jorden said in a phone interview. “He said it had become meaner. And shows like ‘M*A*S*H’ only come around once in a lifetime.” More

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      Stream These 9 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in August

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      Of the many movies leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers this month, these are the ones most worth checking out.There are scares aplenty in the titles leaving Netflix in the United States at the end of the month, with two contemporary horror favorites and one absolute classic departing the service. We can also recommend a handful of first-rate thrillers, one of the most quotable comedies of the 21st century and a Kevin Costner Western that’s neither “Dances With Wolves” or “Yellowstone.” (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Conjuring’ (Aug. 20)When this modestly-scaled haunted house movie hit theaters in summer of 2013, few could have imagined that it would not only become so profitable — returning $319 million worldwide on a $20 million budget — but also spawn a multi-movie “universe” of eight films and counting. But that was all to come; the pleasures of this initial entry are simple, rooted in the authenticity of its ’70s setting, the grounded performances by Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor and the confident direction from James Wan (particularly his execution of one of the single best jump-scares in recent memory).Stream it here.‘In the Line of Fire’ (Aug. 30)Clint Eastwood made a rare late-career acting-only appearance in this first-rate thriller from the director Wolfgang Petersen. Eastwood stars as the Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, one of the agents working in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That connection catches the attention of a potential assassin (John Malkovich), who baits Horrigan into a game of cat and mouse by threatening to repeat history on his watch. Malkovich was nominated for an Academy Award for his chilling turn as the ruthlessly intelligent killer, but Eastwood’s performance is the real deal; the taciturn actor finds striking notes of vulnerability and melancholy for his guilt-ridden character.Stream it here.‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ (Aug. 31)Will Ferrell’s breakthrough vehicle was one of the most culturally inescapable comedies of the 2000s, endlessly quoted and memed, and for good reason: It’s a screamingly funny comedy, taking an absurd concept (the 1970s-set story of a local “Action News” anchor) to its absolute limit, thanks to a spot-on turn from Ferrell as a dopey blowhard, great supporting work from the likes of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Fred Willard, and Christina Applegate’s perfectly modulated turn as his foil turned love interest. But it was also the feature directorial debut of the future Oscar winner Adam McKay, who was already using broad comedy as cover to smuggle in headier themes (this time, of gender roles, toxic masculinity and media ineptitude).Stream it here.‘Cliffhanger’ (Aug. 31)Few megastars have mounted as many comebacks as Sylvester Stallone (one of the many parallels between the actor-filmmaker and his most famous creation, Rocky Balboa). He was rebounding from an ill-advised attempt at comedy — remember “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”? — when he fronted this white-knuckle thriller in 1993. The boilerplate script (which Stallone co-wrote) amounts to “Die Hard” on a Mountain, with Stallone as the rugged but desperate hero, John Lithgow as the elegant terrorist villain and the Rocky Mountains as the locale. But Stallone and Lithgow fill their roles nicely, and the director Renny Harlin (previously of, by no coincidence, “Die Hard 2”) orchestrates the mayhem with panache.Stream it here.‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Aug. 31)Christopher Nolan capped his Batman trilogy — and followed up “The Dark Knight,” one of history’s most commercially and critically successful comic book films — with this 2012 action epic. It’s neither as thrilling as “The Dark Knight” nor as narratively efficient as the earlier “Batman Begins,” and it borders on bloated at nearly three hours. But there’s something boldly operatic to its ambition, to how Nolan folds in new villains, post-Occupy politics and a decidedly unheroic tone of borderline nihilism. Tom Hardy’s Bane is a true terror, and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman is a gem of complex sensuality.Stream it here.‘Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol’ (Aug. 31)It speaks to the high quality of the entire series that no clear consensus seems to exist on the best film of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. But there’s a strong case to be made for this, the fourth entry, which was the live-action directorial debut of the Pixar alum Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”). Tom Cruise returns as Agent Ethan Hunt, this time drawn into the complex, globe-trotting pursuit of a nuclear terrorist who frames Hunt and his team for a bombing at the Kremlin. Simon Pegg, back from Part 3, offers welcome comic relief, the new additions Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton add considerable spice, and two of the set pieces — the aforementioned Kremlin sequence and Cruise’s gripping climb of the Burj Khalifa — are among the franchise’s best. (The series’s first and second installments also leave Netflix at the end of the month.)Stream it here.‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (Aug. 31)Wes Craven went from a genre journeyman to a horror icon — and launched one of the most venerable slasher franchises ever — with this 1984 creeper. Craven wrote and directed this story of suburban teens that find their dreams haunted — often with deadly, real-life results — by the neighborhood boogieman, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Heather Langenkamp is the resourceful protagonist, while Johnny Depp, in his film debut, is one of the more memorable victims. Subsequent sequels would highlight Krueger with greater prominence but diminishing returns, effectively turning the films into horror-comedies. But this inaugural entry is a lean, mean, scare machine, filled with terrifying images and well-crafted suspense.Stream it here.‘Public Enemies’ (Aug. 31)Twenty-five years later, Depp was at the height of his career, starring as the Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in this crime epic from the director Michael Mann (“Heat”). Mann also co-wrote the script for this fact-based tale, which tells the parallel stories of Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the F.B.I. agent using all of the tools of the agency to track him down. Mann’s use of contemporary digital photography was controversial at the time, but it is an inspired choice, giving the picture a contemporary sheen that keeps it from feeling like dusty, unapproachable history.Stream it here.‘Wyatt Earp’ (Aug. 31)Some good movies just suffer from rotten timing. That was certainly the case with this 1994 western epic, which re-teamed the writer and director Lawrence Kasdan with his “Silverado” star Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, their film hit theaters six months after “Tombstone,” which also told the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the gunfight at the OK Corral. But the two films tell the same story in a very different way: “Tombstone” is a brisk, contemporary interpretation, emphasizing action and thrills (it shared a director with “Rambo”), while “Earp” is an old-fashioned, character-driven western in the style of John Ford (who made his own Earp film, the classic “My Darling Clementine,” in 1946). But time has been kind to Kasdan’s take, and the popularity of western TV dramas like Costner’s “Yellowstone” make “Wyatt Earp” ripe for rediscovery.Stream it here.Also leaving:“Taxi Driver” (Aug. 25), “Wind River” (Aug. 27), “The Departed,” “Goodfellas,” “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Rise of the Guardians,”“Starship Troopers,” ‘Titanic” (all Aug. 31). More

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      Late Night Reacts to Biden’s Rebound Covid Case

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      “It’s the hottest rebound since J. Lo tested positive for a second case of Affleck,” Stephen Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.On the ReboundOver the weekend, President Biden tested positive for Covid-19 again, days after being treated with Paxlovid for a previous case. Others, like Stephen Colbert, have similar stories.“Wow, getting Covid twice in a row ’cause you took Paxlovid? Who could’ve seen this coming?” Colbert said. “It happened to me.”“It happened to lots of folks. I don’t know anyone who took Paxlovid who didn’t get it again. It’s the hottest rebound since J. Lo tested positive for a second case of Affleck.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Researchers say Paxlovid rebound is caused by insufficient drug exposure: not enough of the Paxlovid drug gets to infected cells to stop all viral replication. So the Covid pops right back up, which is why the White House is now trying to give Paxlovid to Biden’s poll numbers.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Aunt Barbara Edition)“It’s definitely not the rebound Biden was hoping for.” — TREVOR NOAH“That’s right, over the weekend, President Biden returned to isolation after once again testing positive for Covid in what his doctor called a rebound case. Right now, Biden’s looking on the bright side. He’s like, ‘Well, at least my Covid got a second term.’” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, a rebound case of Covid. Usually when a 79-year-old is on the rebound, you’re meeting your new aunt named Barbara.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, the virus came back so fast, staffers didn’t even have time to take down the ‘Get well soon’ balloons.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “The Daily Show,” correspondent Roy Wood Jr. investigated the origins of house music for the latest edition of his segment “CP Time.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightKing Princess will play a song from her new album, “Hold on Baby,” on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutRepresentative Shirley Chisholm of New York on “Meet the Press” in 1972 with her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.Bettmann, via Getty Images“The Only Woman in the Room” collects photos of lone women holding their own among male politicians, athletes, scientists, journalists, jazz musicians and others. More

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      ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 11 Recap: Back to the Beginning

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      Gene works a new scam, Francesca takes a phone call, and three guys get to know each other in an RV.Season 6, Episode 11: ‘Breaking Bad’Well, look who’s back.Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) make their much heralded return in this episode, which is named for the show they immortalized. We re-meet them in the immediate aftermath of a scene that took place in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad” in an episode titled, with fitting symmetry, “Better Call Saul.”It’s the moment when Saul completes his pivot from sheer terror at his imminent death — he initially thought that cartel mercenaries were about to kill him in the desert — to a kind of swaggering delight as he looks around the RV that is the duo’s rolling meth lab. He handles some equipment and quickly figures out that Walt is Heisenberg, maker of the famed “blue stuff” that is the most celebrated illicit drug in Albuquerque.Your Faithful Recapper was stunned at how easily and convincingly these two actors resuscitated their roles. Then he wondered at the point of inserting these guys at this particular moment in the tale. A theory: What’s being explored is an origin story, the birth of a trio that earns hundreds of millions in the meth business and leaves in its wake more than a dozen corpses, including those of a drug kingpin (Gus Fring) and an innocent boy on a dirt bike. We see the spark that ends in a bonfire.When Mike shows up later at Saul’s office to report that Walt is a high school chemistry teacher with cancer, he also delivers a prescient warning.“I wouldn’t go near him,” he says. “He’s a complete amateur.”If only Saul had listened. If he had taken Mike’s advice, he would still have his practice in Albuquerque, that spectacularly garish house and a prominent place in the legal firmament of the city.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel is ending this year.A Refresher: Need to catch up? Here’s where things left off after the first seven episodes of the show’s final season, which aired this spring.Bob Odenkirk: After receiving a fifth Emmy nomination in July, the star discussed bringing some measure of self-awareness to the character of Saul for his final bow.Stealing the Show: Kim Wexler’s long slide toward perdition has become arguably the narrative keystone of the series, thanks to Rhea Seehorn’s performance.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.He misses all of it. In the Omaha timeline of the show, he reconnects with Francesca, his benighted assistant, whose life in the aftermath of “Breaking Bad” turns out to be dreary and haunted by law enforcement. She is tailed, her phone is tapped, and her tenants are stoners who expect her to clear their stem-clogged sink. One can only imagine the incredulity of the D.E.A. when she claimed that she had no idea she was an officer of an offshore shell company, owned by Mr. Goodman, called Tigerfish. Small wonder she oozes bitterness during her conversation with Saul-Gene, who calls a pay phone from Omaha — exactly at 3 pm, on Nov. 12, as planned during a flash forward in Episode 5 of Season 4 — to get an update about his carefully hidden fortune.All gone, she reports.The only good news comes at the end of the call when Francesca says that Kim was in touch and asked about Jimmy. Specifically, she wanted to know if Jimmy was alive. This heartens Jimmy so much that he calls Kim at Palm Coast Sprinklers in Titusville, Fla., which is where she seems to work. (The transition from corporate lawyer to public defender to sprinkler sales somehow seems about right.) We don’t know anything about the conversation other than that Jimmy’s side of it is filled with the body language of an infuriated man and ends with him doing his best to destroy the phone and phone booth.The scene strongly suggests that the show is going to revisit the relationship between the two. Now that there are no impediments to construction of the superlab being built by Gus and the Salamancas have decided not to kill “the Chicken Man” over the disappearance of Lalo, the future of Jimmy and Kim looks like the main element of suspense in the remaining two episodes of the show.So here’s a question: Are we rooting for a reunion? If you’re Kim, the answer is clouded by the reality that Saul Goodman became not merely a new work name but also a new persona. Jimmy began to consort with prostitutes and lived in an preposterously decorated mansion, clearly obsessed with earning as many dollars possible. He became a guy that Kim would find repulsive. If Kim followed the news, or did an internet search, she would have seen what became of her husband. She might know that the man she married no longer exists.Whatever she said during that call, it inspires Jimmy to start earning money, pronto. He makes amends, in his own blunt way, with Jeff and his buddy Buddy (Max Bickelhaup) and the three begin a new scam. Jimmy approaches men at bars and gets them soused; Jeff drives them home in a cab, offering a bottle of water spiked with barbiturates; then Buddy enters the home and photographs IDs, tax records and credit card bills, information which is sold to some kind of broker. It’s a three-man identity theft crime spree, and it yields stacks of $20s. That is far better than the Cinnabon money Gene earns but a fraction of the plaintiff’s attorney bucks he pocketed and off-shored as Saul.Exactly why Jimmy-Gene feels so compelled to raise money quickly isn’t clear. He doesn’t seem to need the services of Ed Galbraith, a.k.a. the Disappearer, whom Gene called last season when he was first approached by Jeff. (At least he doesn’t need those services now. Firing Buddy over the morality of robbing a guy with cancer could prove his undoing if Buddy starts talking to the cops, or anyone else, for that matter.)The episode ends with Saul walking in one door and Gene walking in another, events separated by years. Saul is paying a visit to Walt, a meeting we have already seen in “Breaking Bad.” Jimmy is entering the home of the mark with cancer. The confab with Walt, we know, eventually ends in calamity. We’ll see what happens to Gene in Omaha, but it’s a safe bet that Jeff is right when he says that the barbiturates have surely worn off.Odds and EndsFrom that conversation with Francesca, we learn the fate of some key characters from “Breaking Bad.” Skyler White cut a deal with the feds. Huell Babineaux lives in New Orleans, free largely because he was unlawfully detained by none other than Hank Schrader, fans will recall.Saul is apparently a fan of “Frankenstein,” the 1931 movie by James Whale. He calls the R.V. “James Whale’s traveling road show,” a reference to the lab in the film. He calls Jesse “Igor,” who was Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant. And when he recommends the Swing Master to Mike — has there ever been a more useless looking device? — he says it will help him to stop walking “like Frankenstein after he was probed by aliens.”We have to assume that Saul buried the money that he uses to pay Francesca for the reconnaissance phone call. He sounds relieved that it hasn’t been eaten by rats, suggesting it has been in situ for a while. And who else could have put it there?“Better Call Saul” has always had something of a split personality. It has had the drugs-and-crime plot bequeathed to it, in reverse, by “Breaking Bad,” and it has told the story of Jimmy and his relationships with his brother and with Kim. The drug plot is largely physical, the relationships plot mostly interior. The previous two episodes have all but abandoned the cartel element of the story, perhaps because it was buried along with Lalo.Where “Breaking Bad” kept getting bigger as the show progressed — it eventually included Mexican mobsters, neo-Nazis, a German conglomerate, federal agents, prosecutors and a story that purported to make national news — “Better Call Saul” is getting smaller. It has shed old story lines to create new ones that are modest in scale. Our main character is back in bars, where he started.One way to look at this: The show is emphasizing its own identity rather than ending with the sort of crescendo we watched in “Breaking Bad.” Another way: It’s disappointing that viewers are not currently in a frenzy of anticipation over the life and death of any number of people. Instead, we’re waiting to find out if Gene’s secret identity will remain intact, and whether he’ll win back Kim.Two more to go. In the comments, please offer some theories about what is happening to the intro reel of the show. It’s been deteriorating over the seasons, as though it were a VHS tape that’s been viewed too many times. Why? A mirror of Jimmy’s moral degradation? A tribute to Mike’s Betamax machine?Or ponder something simpler: Is that a soggy Funyun in the sink of Francesca’s tenants?If yes, ick. More

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      Bill Cosby to Seek a New Trial in Judy Huth Sex Assault Case

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      Ms. Huth was awarded $500,000 in damages in June by a California civil court jury that heard her describe how Mr. Cosby had sexually assaulted her in 1975 when she was 16.Bill Cosby’s lawyers have announced they are seeking a new trial in a civil case in California where a jury in June found he sexually assaulted Judy Huth when she was 16.In a filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Santa Monica, Calif., his lawyers gave notice that they are asking the court to set aside the judgment in favor of Ms. Huth, which awarded her $500,000 in damages.The lawyers listed a number of grounds, including “irregularity in the proceedings of the court, jury or adverse party,” “misconduct of the jury” and “error in law,” among other reasons, without giving more details.Jurors in the case agreed with Ms. Huth, who first came forward with her accusations in 2014, that Mr. Cosby assaulted her in 1975, when as a teenager she accepted his invitation to join him at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. It was the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to go to trial.Aside from its significance to Ms. Huth, the verdict offered a degree of satisfaction for many of the other women who for years have accused Mr. Cosby, now 85, of similar abuse. For them, Ms. Huth’s case offered an opportunity for public vindication of their accounts after Mr. Cosby’s criminal conviction in the Andrea Constand case was overturned on due process grounds by a Pennsylvania appellate panel last year.A lawyer for Ms. Huth, Gloria Allred, said in an email: “Bill Cosby filed a notice of intention to file a motion for a new trial. He fought our case with everything he had for seven and a half years, and he lost. We expect to be victorious in upholding the verdict against Mr. Cosby, which we fought hard for and won.”But Mr. Cosby’s supporters have said they viewed the monetary damage award in the Huth case as a victory because the jury had the option of awarding a significantly higher sum.Mr. Cosby has consistently denied the many accusations brought against him, but many of his accusers had been barred from filing their own suits because they had not come forward at the time when they said Mr. Cosby had attacked them.Ms. Huth’s suit was able to move forward because the jury agreed she was a minor at the time, and California law extends the time frame in which people who say they were molested as children can file a civil claim. A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, said changes to California’s statute of limitations had been unfair to Mr. Cosby because they came into effect during his period in prison in Pennsylvania.During the trial, Ms. Huth, now 64, told of how a chance meeting with Mr. Cosby while he filmed a movie in a local park led her eventually to an isolated bedroom in the Playboy Mansion. In often emotional testimony, she described how a famous man she had once admired, whose comedy records her father collected, tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to perform a sex act on him. More